Democrats are reportedly preparing to investigate JPMorgan’s banking relationship with late financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — and are considering hauling execs at other Wall Street giants before Congress once they take control in January.
The Senate Finance Committee’s Democrats are planning to scrutinize how executives at the nation’s largest bank handled Epstein, who was a major client of the bank for about 15 years, CNBC reported Thursday citing anonymous sources.
Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 weeks after being charged with human trafficking. He also pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2008 – five years before JPMorgan finally dropped him.
Senior congressional Dems have reportedly been studying a lefty think tank’s 181-page dossier penned by former staffers of Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The document from the Groundwork Collaborative argues Dems should focus on a broader swath of investigations than ones aired in the news to date, according to the Washington Sun.
Instead of targeting President Trump’s gift of a jet from Qatar, Reflecting Pool renovation or White House ballroom construction, Dems should question executives for health care, tech, energy and Wall Street sectors about the current cost-of-living crisis, the document argued.
Sen. Ron Wyden – an Oregon Democrat who is married to the owner of NYC’s Strand bookstore – is currently the ranking member of the Finance Committee and could take the chairman position in January.
On Tuesday, as Democrats around the country flipped congressional seats, Wyden shared a suggestive one-word remark on X: “Subpoenas.” Dem members of the Finance Committee, who have their own account, replied: “Let’s f–king go.”
In the Epstein case, Democrats are planning to target decisions made by Mary Callahan Erdoes, the chief executive of JPMorgan’s wealth management division, according to CNBC.
Erdoes has testified that she was aware as early as 2006 that Epstein was accused of paying for underage girls to be brought to his home. She did not cut off Epstein as a client until 2013.
“The US government had damning information about Epstein’s crimes that it failed to share with us or other banks,” a JPMorgan spokesperson told The Post.
“We regret any association we had with him, but we did not help him commit his crimes.”
In 2023, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon testified that Erdoes had the authority to drop Epstein. Jes Staley – the ex-JPMorgan exec who admitted to having sex with an Epstein staffer – also testified that Erdoes had “full authority to remove Epstein as a client” earlier, but failed to do so.
Just six months after Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea, Erdoes reportedly turned to Epstein for help as the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme wreaked havoc for the firm’s clients, according to court documents filed by the US Virgin Islands in a 2023 lawsuit against JPMorgan. Erdoes emailed Staley and asked him to call Epstein, the docs said.
Mimi Liu, co-lead counsel for the US Virgin Islands in the case, told a federal judge in 2023 that JPMorgan “was a full-service bank for Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking,” arguing the institution waited to notify the government of his suspicious transactions until after he killed himself.
“This was a CYA [cover your ass] reporting after 16 years of all the monies flowing in his JPMorgan accounts after he was dead,” Liu added.
JPMorgan paid $75 million to settle the lawsuit brought by the US Virgin Islands, which alleged the bank benefited from the sex trafficking of Epstein’s victims. The bank also agreed to a $290 million settlement with Epstein’s victims. It did not admit wrongdoing in the settlements.
The bank has blamed Staley – who left JPMorgan in 2013 and later became CEO of Barclays before stepping down in 2021 – for failing to report criminal activity related to Epstein.
Staley has denied being aware of Epstein’s crimes. In 2025, he testified in London court that Epstein knew more about what was going on at the top levels of the bank than he did, saying the sex criminal had a “remarkable ability” to gather Wall Street intel.
After grilling Staley during a closed-door interview in July, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said Staley defended Epstein and encouraged JPMorgan to keep him on as a client despite “red flags.”
In August, Wyden – the possible new Finance chair – accused executives at multiple banks of “looking the other way” and shielding Epstein during his years of sex trafficking.
The Department of Justice has been releasing “Epstein files” since late 2025 – hundreds of thousands of pages showing the sex criminal’s communications with powerful pols, celebs and financiers.
The trove of documents also includes previously unseen photos of Epstein with A-listers and high-profile figures including Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, former President Bill Clinton and President Trump.
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